Last week we talked about creating your rankings using all those 2003 Fantasy Football Projections out there and your own leagues scoring system. This week we get into how to use them in your draft.
There are about a thousand different ways to draft a fantasy football team and there are more then a million people out there telling us that their way of doing it is the best. Some, actually the majority, will tell you that drafting your 2 Running Backs (RB) first is the best approach. Others will tell you your draft order should be as follows: the best available RB, then best available Quarterback (QB), and then best available Wide Receiver (WR). And a chosen few will say draft the best available player for the first three to four rounds then fill the holes in your roster. So, which is truly the best method of drafting a moneymaking, league winning fantasy football team? The answer: None of them.
That’s right none of them. People, you need to relax and take a long hard look at what it takes to win at fantasy football. Its really simple when you think about it, it takes points. Draft day is the most important day of your fantasy football season so to me it never made sense to limit or constrict your point of view. What you do on draft day could make or brake your whole season so do yourself a favor and do your own homework instead of buying into someone else’s drafting strategy. Remember…don’t let emotion cloud logic. Sure it may be easier just to follow some standard drafting strategy but in the end it doesn’t matter if it’s a RB, QB, or WR as long as you are drafting the player that you believe will get you most points. I mean why draft the #5 or #6 RB when the #1 or #2 WR is still available? Don’t get stuck in some draft strategy that lets more valuable players slip through the cracks and onto someone else’s roster. Hogwash you say…let me prove it to you.
Last season, my business partner and I won our high stakes fantasy league, and you know who our first pick of the draft was? Terrell Owens. That’s right with the 5th pick in the draft we grabbed a WR. Guess who our second pick was (16th pick overall)? Marvin Harrison. That’s right another WR. Why WR’s you ask? Easy, our scoring system at the time favored WR’s.
The fact that there were more ways for a WR to score in this league was overlooked by almost all the other owners so while they were scrambling to get top 10 RB’s and QB’s we strolled in and picked up the two best WR’s of the season. It’s all about doing your homework kid’s, know your scoring system backwards and forwards and see if it favors one position over the others. Oh…and if you’re thinking that we ended up with bottom barrel RB’s and QB’s then think again. Ricky Williams and Travis Henry in the backfield and Brad Johnson and Trent Green taking snaps isn’t a bad draft at all. See, it’s not about drafting the best player sometimes…its about drafting the RIGHT player.
Now there will be other factors that need to be recognized. Well one of those factors, and in my opinion the biggest, which will affect your draft strategy, is the quality player availability. Knowing how many high-quality players there are at each position is almost as important as knowing who they are. I call this the “drop-off point”. This is the line where we go from top tier to good, good to average, average to so-so, and so-so to I’m screwed. But how do I tier my rankings you ask. Well grasshopper…this is how!
It’s a simple two-step process. First we figure out the drop-off point. This is done by taking the rankings that we completed last week (this process was explained in last week’s article “The Power of Projections”) and looking at the Total Points (TP) scored by each player and how they relate to each other. Here is an example;
Scoring Summary
|
Name |
PASS |
TD |
RUSH |
TD |
INT |
TP |
TPG |
|
Michael Vick |
3319 |
21 |
795 |
8 |
10 |
325 |
20 |
|
Donovan McNabb |
3596 |
25 |
591 |
6 |
11 |
321 |
20 |
|
Daunte Culpepper |
3796 |
23 |
524 |
7 |
16 |
304 |
19 |
|
Rich Gannon |
4125 |
25 |
176 |
2 |
9 |
280 |
18 |
|
Jeff Garcia |
3708 |
26 |
312 |
3 |
11 |
276 |
17 |
|
Peyton Manning |
4153 |
28 |
134 |
2 |
16 |
270 |
17 |
|
Aaron Brooks |
3752 |
26 |
286 |
2 |
15 |
265 |
17 |
|
Steve McNair |
3353 |
21 |
373 |
3 |
13 |
248 |
16 |
|
Kurt Warner |
3927 |
28 |
50 |
0 |
16 |
243 |
15 |
|
Matt Hasselbeck |
3668 |
23 |
207 |
1 |
12 |
240 |
15 |
Ok we can see that Vick leads the QB’s in Total Points scored in our rankings. So what we need to do is figure out how everyone else’s points compare to the person just above them in our rankings. So create another column called “Drop-off Point” (DOP) and minus McNabb’s points from Vick’s to get McNabb’s Drop-off point, then Culpepper’s from McNabb’s to get Culpepper’s and then so on and so down the line. That would give you something like this;
Scoring Summary
|
Name |
PASS |
TD |
RUSH |
TD |
INT |
TP |
TPG |
DOP |
|
Michael Vick |
3319 |
21 |
795 |
8 |
10 |
325 |
20 |
0 |
|
Donovan McNabb |
3596 |
25 |
591 |
|
